"It's another burden to people in business and it frustrates their attempts - you might lose financial records as well as important health records."

Ransomware attacks on the rise globally

In Australia, real estate agents, councils and universities have also been victims.

Sean Duca from internet security company McAfee predicts the number of attacks will soar this year.

"The escalating growth in Australia has really been around more and more samples coming out on regular basis," he said.

"The cyber criminals are actually seeing this is as quite lucrative for them because they see it as an easy mechanism to send out an email, trick the person into clicking something and sometimes just luring [them] to go to a website and download some files that automatically encrypts their files and they simply send out a ransom."